Calming Anxiety | Guided Meditation, Sleep Hypnosis & Panic Attack Relief

Lobster Salad by Lord Dunsany — A Funny Short Fantasy Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

Drift off with Lobster Salad by Lord Dunsany, a wry and thrilling little fantasy about a very bad dream, read aloud by Martin Hewlett on Books at Bedtime, the sleep story series from Calming Anxiety.

 

Our narrator is climbing the perilous outside of a vast white palace, high above the craggy tops of the mountains. There are no battlements or terraces to rest on, only the sheer face of the wall, and he is dressed in a night-shirt and stout leather boots. His fingers and wrists are aching, and he dares not look down.

 

That the whole thing is a dream, he admits, is beside the point. We have all fallen in dreams before, and it is well known that if you ever hit the ground, you die. Every boulder on the wall has its own different terror, and something is following close behind him. Then he comes to a great gap in the wall that he cannot cross, and he has one last, desperate idea. As for that curious title, Dunsany lets you work it out for yourself.

 

This classic short story for adults is a playful wind-down for a busy mind, with Dunsany's dreamlike prose, his dry humour and Martin's calm, unhurried narration. If you've ever woken from a nightmare with your heart racing, you'll smile at this one. It's an ideal short sleep audiobook for fantasy lovers and for anyone with insomnia who finds it hard to switch off at night.

 

If you enjoyed it, you'll find more Lord Dunsany on Books at Bedtime, including How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana, The Hen and The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise, all from the same collection.

 

Lobster Salad was first published in Fifty-One Tales (London: Elkin Mathews; New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1915). Lord Dunsany (1878–1957).

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett.

 

📱 Listen to Books at Bedtime in the Anchored app, offline and with the screen off, so you can fall asleep without a bright phone in your hand:

 

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored

 

🧡 For Martin's calming tips, visit: https://calminganxiety.org/calm

 

🌱 Try Thole, Martin's new health and wellness app, in beta on iPhone: https://testflight.apple.com/join/aUKB8W7N

 

Sleep well, my friend. And in everything, be kind.

 

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins at Indie Music Box

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

If you have woken up carrying the weight of yesterday, if some quiet part of you is ready to let go of the past and simply begin again, then take a slow breath. This is exactly where you are meant to be.

Welcome to Calming Anxiety with Martin Hewlett.Each day is a new beginning, a fresh start, a clean slate, and a blank page that is yours to write. This 10-minute session is your guided meditation for a positive life, designed to help you gently set a positive tone for the day ahead, clear away morning anxiety, and find deep relaxation.

Time Chapters
Intro: Finding your quiet place, breathing awareness, and letting go of the past.

Affirmations: Powerful morning affirmations for a positive mind and a clean slate.

3 Daily Caring Tips: Practical steps to carry this new beginning into your day. Outro: Coming back to the room, call to action, and final blessings.Morning Affirmations For A Positive Mind Let these words settle into you. Visualize them, feel them to be true, and let them transform your day: Each day is a new beginning and today I choose a positive life. I let the past stay in the past, this moment is my fresh start. My heart is open, my mind is clear and I welcome this new day with a positive mind. I am enough exactly as I am and I have all I need to begin again. Today is a clean slate and I set a gentle positive tone for all that lies ahead.3 Daily Caring Tips For A Happier Life
Set One Positive Intention: Before reaching for your phone, choose a single anchor word (like calm, kind, open, or brave) to act as your quiet compass for the hours ahead.
Catch One Small Beauty: Notice a tiny moment of beauty—steam rising from a cup or light through a window—and practice gratitude. Gratitude is how a new day becomes a good day.
You Can Always Begin Again: If the day slips and the calm fades, remember that a fresh start isn’t just for the morning. A new beginning is always just one breath away.
Take the Calm With You Everywhere If today felt like the fresh start you needed, you can keep this peace with you every single day. Download my app, Anchored, to keep your daily calm right in your pocket. Access nearly seven years of work and over 3,000 sessions! Download: Search "Anchored" on the App Store or Google Play. Web: Head over to calminganxiety.fm/anchored.Sending you a hug and a smile today. And as always, in everything you do, be kind.

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https://calminganxietypodcast.substack.com/?r=6zm0sc&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

Backing Music: Chris Collins

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Affiliate links to the gear I use the items that give me a more tranquil life.

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Items I use for a more relaxed way of life :)
Organic Pure Hemp CBD Capsules - https://amzn.to/3

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana by Lord Dunsany — A Dark Fantasy Fable for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

 

Drift off with How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana by Lord Dunsany, a short, spellbinding fantasy fable of prophecy, magicians and a dreaded secret, read aloud by Martin Hewlett on Books at Bedtime, the sleep story series from Calming Anxiety.

 

It was foretold in ancient days that an enemy would come upon Thlunrana. The date of its doom was known, and so was the gate by which the enemy would enter. Yet no prophecy said who the enemy was, only that he was of the gods, though he dwelt with men. Meanwhile Thlunrana, the great secret cathedral of wizardry, remained the terror of the valley, its narrow windows glowing strangely in the night, and its magicians veiled, hooded and cloaked in black.

 

On the last night of all, a man from a black thatched cottage by the five pine trees climbs the dark valley for one final look at the place. Afraid but determined, he walks in through the southward door named the Gate of Doom. He passes the whispering magicians and their lighted tapers, and comes at last to a silk pavilion in a chamber of black marble, the holy of holies, where the deepest mystery of Thlunrana lies behind drawn curtains. What he finds there, and who the enemy really is, Dunsany saves for the final lines.

 

This classic short story for adults is a rich, atmospheric wind-down for a busy mind, with Dunsany's dreamlike, mythic prose, a surprisingly satisfying ending and Martin's calm, unhurried narration. It's an ideal short sleep audiobook for fantasy lovers and for anyone with insomnia who finds it hard to switch off at night.

 

If you enjoyed it, you'll find more Lord Dunsany on Books at Bedtime, including The Hen, The Return of the Exiles and The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise, all from the same collection.

 

How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana was first published in Fifty-One Tales (London: Elkin Mathews; New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1915). Lord Dunsany (1878–1957).

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett.

 

📱 Listen to Books at Bedtime in the Anchored app, offline and with the screen off, so you can fall asleep without a bright phone in your hand:

 

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anchored-panic-anxiety/id6785035669

 

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinhewlett.anchored

 

🧡 For Martin's calming tips, visit: https://calminganxiety.org/calm

 

🌱 Try Thole, Martin's new health and wellness app, in beta on iPhone: https://testflight.apple.com/join/aUKB8W7N

 

Sleep well, my friend. And in everything, be kind.

 

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins at Indie Music Box

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Money Anxiety Relief — Calm Financial Stress & Worry | Guided Meditation with the Extended Exhale

 

Money anxiety rarely arrives when you are busy — it waits for the quiet: the moment before sleep, the beep of the card machine, the envelope on the mat. This 10-minute guided meditation is here to calm that financial stress in your body, settle a racing mind, and remind your nervous system that in this moment you are safe.

 

Today we use the extended exhale, sometimes called the one-to-two breath, where the out breath is twice as long as the in breath. It is a simple, powerful way to press the body's own brake pedal through the vagus nerve — because money worry lives in the future, but the breath lives in the body, and the body is always here.

 

Hosted by clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic Martin Hewlett, this session asks nothing of you but to breathe. Nothing to solve, nothing to fix — just ten minutes to release the financial stress you have been carrying and come back to yourself with a clearer, steadier chest.

 

⏱️ Time Chapters

 

* 00:00 – When money worry arrives in the quiet

* 00:39 – Why it's your nervous system, not the numbers

* 01:02 – Welcome — Martin & the Anchored app

* 01:48 – Settling down: shoulders, jaw, eyes

* 02:09 – The extended exhale (the one-to-two breath) & the science

* 03:09 – Guided breathing rounds

* 04:48 – Noticing what shifted

* 05:08 – Calming affirmations & visualization

* 06:56 – Breath awareness and deepening

* 08:32 – Today's 3 Daily Caring Tips

* 09:14 – Gently coming back

* 09:40 – Closing & a word on the loneliest worry

* 10:24 – Be kind

 

🌿 Today's Gentle Affirmations

 

Let these settle as you breathe:

 

* I am safe in this moment.

* Any worry is a feeling in my body. It is not a fact about my future.

* I can be calm and still be responsible.

* I release the financial stress I have been carrying in my body.

* I have survived every difficult day so far — every single one.

* I do not have to solve this today.

* I have survived 100% of my worst days.

* Tomorrow, I will act with a clear head and a steady chest.

 

💡 3 Daily Caring Tips

 

1. Choose one fixed ten-minute slot today to look at your finances, and keep the worry inside that window. Outside it, you are off duty.

 

2. Write down the single smallest money action you could take this week — and do only that one thing.

 

3. Move your body for ten minutes before you open any bill or banking app, so that your nervous system is already steady when you look.

 

📱 Take Calming Anxiety With You Anywhere

 

If today landed for you, everything I've ever recorded lives in one place. Download Anchored on iOS. Access over 3,000 searchable, offline-ready audio sessions, sleep stories with Books at Bedtime, and built-in nightlight features for the small hours — and it remembers exactly where you left off. 👉 Download Anchored on the App Store Today: https://apps.apple.com

 

If this episode helped, please share it with one person who's been quiet lately about their money worries — it's the loneliest worry there is, and it shouldn't be. And if you have 30 seconds, a rating and review on Apple Podcasts helps another anxious mind find us.

 

You're doing better than you think. Smile often, positive thoughts whenever you can, and then to yourself…

 

…be kind.

 

 

👉 Click to subscribe and unlock ad-free episodes now!

 

Support the Show:

 

Ad-Free Listening: Enjoy Calming Anxiety without ads at https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/calming-anxiety--4110266/support

 

Buy Me a Coffee: Support hosting costs at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/calminganxiety

 

Newsletter: Subscribe on Substack at https://calminganxietypodcast.substack.com/?r=6zm0sc&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

 

Rate & Review: Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners!

 

YouTube: Watch all episodes at https://www.youtube.com/c/calminganxiety?sub_confirmation=1

 

Social Media Support: For younger listeners struggling with social media stress, visit https://www.icanhelp.net/

 

Music: All music by Chris Collins

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.

Ready for More Calm?Thank you for listening to the Calming Anxiety Podcast, featuring guided meditation, mindfulness, and sleep hypnosis sessions with Martin Hewlett. Our mission is to provide you with proven tools for anxiety relief, stress reduction, and a path toward deep relaxation. Use this episode anytime you need to calm your mind and feel more at ease.